Right now — versus normally
Direction cannot be predicted from past prices to any useful degree — this site measures that repeatedly and reports the coin-flip results. Volatility is the exception. It clusters: a week of violent moves is followed by more violent moves more often than not, and that relationship is strong enough to be worth acting on when sizing a position or placing a stop.
That is why this ranking shows four windows instead of one. A single volatility number conflates "how wild is this coin" with "how wild is it being today". The one-year figure answers the first, the one-week figure the second, and the ratio between them separates a permanently turbulent asset from one that is currently in an unusual state.
The last column converts the annualised figure back into the size of an ordinary day, because that is the form most people can actually use. An annualised 150% sounds abstract; an average move of roughly eight percent per day does not, and it tells you immediately whether a three percent stop was ever going to survive.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Volatility describes the size of moves, never their direction — a high reading says nothing about whether a coin is about to rise or fall. Figures are annualised standard deviations of daily log returns from Binance closes. All decisions and risks are your own.
It depends on the window, which is why four are shown. A coin can top the seven-day ranking because of one turbulent week while sitting mid-table over a year. The one-week column answers what is happening now and the one-year column answers what the coin is normally like.
It compares the seven-day volatility to the one-year volatility. A value near 1 means the coin is behaving normally; 3 means it is three times more turbulent than usual and is in an unusual regime rather than simply being a volatile asset.
To a useful degree, yes — and it is the only thing on this site that can. Volatility clusters, so a violent week is followed by more violent moves more often than not. Direction shows no such persistence, which is why this page ranks turbulence and never suggests which way it resolves.
Because an annualised percentage is hard to act on. Dividing it by the square root of 365 converts it back to the size of an ordinary daily move, which immediately tells you whether a given stop distance was ever realistic for that coin.
Because crypto trades every day. Equity conventions use roughly 252 trading days a year to account for weekends and holidays, which do not exist here. Using 365 keeps the figures comparable across every window on the page.
It means large moves in both directions. Whether that is risk depends on your position size and your stop: the same volatility is survivable at one size and ruinous at another, which is a sizing question rather than a property of the coin.